USHST Releases New Comparative Accident Report

by Katie Kriz, Assistant Managing Editor

The U.S. Helicopter Safety Team (USHST) has released a follow-up report to its initial helicopter accident analysis from 2011. The report, conducted by the U.S. Joint Helicopter Implementation Measurement Data Analysis Team (JHIMDAT), analyzes U.S. civil helicopter accidents from 2009 to 2011, and compares the results to the Joint Helicopter Safety Analysis Team (JHSAT) analysis from 2000, 2001 and 2006. The report found an overall 21 percent decrease in civil helicopter accidents, with the top three industries showing the greatest improvement being firefighting, air tours and logging.

However, the agriculture, instructional and personal flying industries remained the top three industries that recorded the most accidents in both reports. These three industries accounted for 57 percent of all helicopter accidents, up from 46 percent in the JHSAT report. In order to increase safety in these areas, the International Helicopter Safety Team (IHST), parent organization of USHST, has improved communication efforts to industries with higher accident rates in hopes to decrease the number of accidents in these specific industries.

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